The Wisdom of Indians?
While posting yesterday at a site that forbids discussion of politics and religion, I received the following reply to a post I had made:
<blockquote>We can learn much about leadership and accountability from New World indigenous cultures.</blockquote>
This statement is patently false, and I decided to write an OP to give this statement the reply it so richly deserves. The first point that needs rebutting concerns what "indigenous" means. Here is the definition for "indigenous":
<blockquote>originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.</blockquote>
Is it not possible for Americans to be born here, and naturally at that? How are Americans present in America "unnaturally"? The people that decided Americans are in America "unnaturally" are liberals. They have decided that anybody here before 10 October 1492 is a native and anybody who came here on or after that date is an immigrant, and thus really doesn't belong here. The reason is that liberals are trying to take our country away from us, and the easiest way to do so in the absence of a shooting war is to convince themselves that our presence in our own country is somehow illegitimate. After all, how long would Americans have to be in America to belong here according to liberals? The answer is never.
Actually, Indian groups did teach Americans a few things, such as what plants are edible and how to grow them in particular climates, which were very different from Europe. What the Indians didn't teach Americans is anything about leadership and accountability. As for leadership, the Indians were stuck between hunter/gather (H/G) culture and a primitive agricultural culture. H/G cultures generally only have formal leadership during times of war or crisis. This is why Indians tended to live in small groups of less than sixty-five people. The social scientists tell us this is an important number. When groups or companies start exceeding sixty-five people, formal leadership and management are needed. Being essentially pre-agricultural peoples, Indians were too primitive to exceed these limits.
As for "accountability", there were no courts or other formal bodies to determine guilt and punishment for transgressions. So, when Indians behaved as anti-socially as liberals behave in our country, they were simply banished from their group, which amounted to a death penalty since they had nowhere else to go. How did Indians hold captured prisoners of war and violent criminals accountable? Indian groups were experts at keeping these poor victims alive for as long as a week while they were tortured unmercifully. There is even a book cataloging some of these horrors. Do <i>not</i> read this book before or while eating; it's just that gruesome:
https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Depredations-Texas-J-W-Wilbarger/dp/1519661665
At best, this is called lynching, which is exactly what liberals want to do to Trump. But when was the last time liberals exhorted Americans to return to lynching as the preferred form of criminal justice?
If we put the pieces of together of what liberals want Americans to believe about our own history, we're all immigrants and only allowed to be here under the suffrance of the natives (Indians). The Iroqois Confederation wrote the Constitution, put up Ellis Island, and started America. Americans had nothing to do with creating the country that much of the world is dying to get into--in many cases literally. Our civilization is stolen goods.
The fact is that culturally, America is the product of four different British cultures: Puritans in the northeast, Quakers in the mid-Atlantic region, Cavaliers along the southern coast, and Scots-Irish along the frontier interior. None of these groups needed any help from Indians to set up our societies. There is only one book I know of describing this process, and it is a delight to read:
https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural/dp/0195069056/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=albion%27s+seed&qid=1573303973&s=books&sr=1-1
The fact is that when Columbus first came to these shores, with the exception of goldsmithing in Central America, the Indians were stone age H/G peoples (lack or metallurgical technology and domesticated animals is why Indians weren't able to advance to an agricultural society). This meant that these groups had no washable cloth, but only filthy animals skins to wear and build their shelters out of. They had no metal even for basic things like knives, pots to boil water, or tools to work the land. Everything the Indians ate either had to be roasted on a stick or wrapped in leaves and baked. As I write this, I'm looking at a spear and arrowhead collection. While marvels of craftsmanship, these stone artifacts are as fragile as glass; dropping one of them on the floor would no doubt break it into pieces. This is why every one of these arrowheads is at least five hundred years old; they were all made in pre-Columbian times. Once Indians were able to get metal, they quickly abandoned their stone age technologies.
This is a big reason why there were so many wars between Americans and Indians, with Indians losing their lands. The truth is that Americans didn't need Indians nearly as much as Indians needed the things American technologies could produce. The problem was that since Indians weren't willing to work to produce things of value to trade with Americans to buy the things they want, Indians had three choices: They could sell the handful of things in demand among Americans, such as furs; they could sell their lands; or they could wage war and raids to steal what they wanted.
So, if the liberal who replied to me had wanted to be accurate, he instead would have written that "New World indigenous cultures had much to learn from us about leadership and accountability". It's yet more proof that there is the liberal version of reality and then there is the truth.
<blockquote>We can learn much about leadership and accountability from New World indigenous cultures.</blockquote>
This statement is patently false, and I decided to write an OP to give this statement the reply it so richly deserves. The first point that needs rebutting concerns what "indigenous" means. Here is the definition for "indigenous":
<blockquote>originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.</blockquote>
Is it not possible for Americans to be born here, and naturally at that? How are Americans present in America "unnaturally"? The people that decided Americans are in America "unnaturally" are liberals. They have decided that anybody here before 10 October 1492 is a native and anybody who came here on or after that date is an immigrant, and thus really doesn't belong here. The reason is that liberals are trying to take our country away from us, and the easiest way to do so in the absence of a shooting war is to convince themselves that our presence in our own country is somehow illegitimate. After all, how long would Americans have to be in America to belong here according to liberals? The answer is never.
Actually, Indian groups did teach Americans a few things, such as what plants are edible and how to grow them in particular climates, which were very different from Europe. What the Indians didn't teach Americans is anything about leadership and accountability. As for leadership, the Indians were stuck between hunter/gather (H/G) culture and a primitive agricultural culture. H/G cultures generally only have formal leadership during times of war or crisis. This is why Indians tended to live in small groups of less than sixty-five people. The social scientists tell us this is an important number. When groups or companies start exceeding sixty-five people, formal leadership and management are needed. Being essentially pre-agricultural peoples, Indians were too primitive to exceed these limits.
As for "accountability", there were no courts or other formal bodies to determine guilt and punishment for transgressions. So, when Indians behaved as anti-socially as liberals behave in our country, they were simply banished from their group, which amounted to a death penalty since they had nowhere else to go. How did Indians hold captured prisoners of war and violent criminals accountable? Indian groups were experts at keeping these poor victims alive for as long as a week while they were tortured unmercifully. There is even a book cataloging some of these horrors. Do <i>not</i> read this book before or while eating; it's just that gruesome:
https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Depredations-Texas-J-W-Wilbarger/dp/1519661665
At best, this is called lynching, which is exactly what liberals want to do to Trump. But when was the last time liberals exhorted Americans to return to lynching as the preferred form of criminal justice?
If we put the pieces of together of what liberals want Americans to believe about our own history, we're all immigrants and only allowed to be here under the suffrance of the natives (Indians). The Iroqois Confederation wrote the Constitution, put up Ellis Island, and started America. Americans had nothing to do with creating the country that much of the world is dying to get into--in many cases literally. Our civilization is stolen goods.
The fact is that culturally, America is the product of four different British cultures: Puritans in the northeast, Quakers in the mid-Atlantic region, Cavaliers along the southern coast, and Scots-Irish along the frontier interior. None of these groups needed any help from Indians to set up our societies. There is only one book I know of describing this process, and it is a delight to read:
https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural/dp/0195069056/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=albion%27s+seed&qid=1573303973&s=books&sr=1-1
The fact is that when Columbus first came to these shores, with the exception of goldsmithing in Central America, the Indians were stone age H/G peoples (lack or metallurgical technology and domesticated animals is why Indians weren't able to advance to an agricultural society). This meant that these groups had no washable cloth, but only filthy animals skins to wear and build their shelters out of. They had no metal even for basic things like knives, pots to boil water, or tools to work the land. Everything the Indians ate either had to be roasted on a stick or wrapped in leaves and baked. As I write this, I'm looking at a spear and arrowhead collection. While marvels of craftsmanship, these stone artifacts are as fragile as glass; dropping one of them on the floor would no doubt break it into pieces. This is why every one of these arrowheads is at least five hundred years old; they were all made in pre-Columbian times. Once Indians were able to get metal, they quickly abandoned their stone age technologies.
This is a big reason why there were so many wars between Americans and Indians, with Indians losing their lands. The truth is that Americans didn't need Indians nearly as much as Indians needed the things American technologies could produce. The problem was that since Indians weren't willing to work to produce things of value to trade with Americans to buy the things they want, Indians had three choices: They could sell the handful of things in demand among Americans, such as furs; they could sell their lands; or they could wage war and raids to steal what they wanted.
So, if the liberal who replied to me had wanted to be accurate, he instead would have written that "New World indigenous cultures had much to learn from us about leadership and accountability". It's yet more proof that there is the liberal version of reality and then there is the truth.
